Mike McBride
Jost Schenck
Jonathan Riddell

    kde-en-gb@jriddell.org

Conversion to British English
2003-10-06
3.2
KDE KControl panel

## Panel

Here you can configure the panel's overall appearance.

You can also have the icons themselves zoom out when the mouse is over them, with the Enable icon zooming option. You can choose to have tooltips appear when your mouse button is over an icon, by enabling the Show tooltips option.

### Button Backgrounds

The &kde; panel supports so-called Button Backgrounds. This means that the buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images. To enable button backgrounds, simply choose the button type from the list, and change the drop down box to the colour image you would like to use. Choose Default to return to an unstyled button. If you choose Custom colour, the colour button next to the drop down list will be enabled. Click on it to select a custom colour to use.

### Panel Background

Enable transparency to turn the entire panel transparent. The desktop background will show through instead of a solid colour panel.

There will still be small handles beside each applet, to allow you to locate, move, and configure them. These can be turned off in the Advanced Options...

If you check Enable background image a picture that will be used to draw the panel's background, just as you can use a picture for the desktop background. You can specify an image file in the line edit box below or choose one by clicking on the Browse button. You'll see a preview of the selected picture on the right.

The image can be tinted on-the-fly by enabling the option Colour to match the desktop colour scheme. You might use a greyscale texture that is tinted in this manner, to create a particular effect.

### Advanced Options...

The Hide button size: option allows you to choose a width in pixels for the hide buttons, if they are visible.

The panel itself has several default sizes set, which you can switch between by simply dragging the edge of it, or by &RMB; clicking on an empty space in the panel, choosing Size and selecting the desired size from the submenu. If you enable Allow Drag and Drop resizing of panels then by choosing Custom in the panel menu, you can drag the panel edge to any size you like.

Applet handles are normally visible beside each applet on the panel, so that it is clear where to click to configure them, or to get to the panel menu. You can instead have them Fade out, or hide unless you hover the mouse over them, or you can choose to Hide them completely.

Finally, if the panel is transparent, you can tint it with a colour of your choice. The slider allows you to choose how opaque the tint is. At the lowest end, there is no tint visible, while at the highest, the panel is not transparent at all.

### Section Author

This section written by: Jost Schenck jost@schenck.de

Minor update by Mike McBride mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

Some new options added by Lauri Watts lauri@kde.org

Jonathan Riddellkde-en-gb@jriddell.org